“Got any gum?” is a common question that one likely wouldn’t expect to see on the cover of an album. But that’s exactly what Joe Walsh did with his 1987 project, Got Any Gum? It’s the kind of peculiar title that will quickly grab one’s attention – so why did he give the album this curious title?
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It all stems from one time when the rock star was approached by a person on the street who was homeless, fully expecting to give the man money. But Walsh was delivered a shock when the man asked for something entirely different. “I saw a bum a block away and I knew he was going to ask me for spare change,” Walsh explained in a 1987 interview on Late Night with David Letterman. “So I reach [into my pocket], I’m all ready when he gets up to me. I said, ‘Here help yourself.’ He says, ‘I don’t need money, you got any gum?’ I said, ‘That’s it!’ This guy’s a genius.”
Got Any Gum? marked the Eagles guitarist’s eighth album as a solo artist. It was panned by critics and is his lowest charting album to date on the Billboard 200, only reaching No. 113. Despite its critical and commercial struggle, its lead single “The Radio Song” was a hit, peaking at No. 8 on the Mainstream Rock chart.
“I decided I would make a song that explains how I write music because I got tired of people asking me,” Walsh said of the meaning of “The Radio Song” to Rolling Stone. “And if you read the lyrics, it tells you exactly how I do it: I like to sit in a silent place/When no one’s around and listen inside it/Inside the silence is the melody/Voices singing harmony. That’s it.”
Walsh will reunite with his Eagles bandmates when they embark on The Long Goodbye Tour in 2023 and 2024.
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